It is not that the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were perfect people, that they produced perfect documents or that they uniformly implemented their best proposals, but I have no doubt that they would view with alarm the result of their hopeful work: a politics in which rules are for fools and liberty is just another word for encroachment on the liberty of others. Years from now, when historians talk about this era (and they will), they will not be kind.
Fortunately, we have television to distract us from this darkness, as long as we don't turn on the news. Television has long analyzed the American Revolution and several founding figures, in satirical, thoughtful, and completely unhistorical ways, but generally with a degree of optimism. With the Fourth of July just around the corner, I've put together a brief, entirely personal guide to watching small-screen television, both old and new, and red, white, and blue.
The Internet will be your portal for much of what follows.
My first thought when approaching this task was to wonder if the lovely Jean Shepherd “The Great American” Four of July and other disasters” (YouTube) was everywhere on the Internet, and thankfully so. A production of the still-missed public television series “American Playhouse,” it arrived in 1982, the year before Shepherd’s film “A Christmas Story,” with Ralph, now a teenager, played by a young Matt Dillon. (There are passing references to the movie: gouging out an eye, winning a lamp.) At the center of the story is the Old Man’s (James Broderick) obsession with fireworks, but there’s also a sack race, potato salad, a chain letter for dishcloths and a bad blind date. Shepherd narrates, naturally.
With an epic tone applied to the everyday affairs of a small town (not to mention two brothers in an eccentric family), Shepherd's youthful reminiscences remind me of “Pete's Adventures” & Pedro, The 1990s Nickelodeon series was shot like a Hal Hartley movie. In the second-season episode “Grounded for Life” (YouTube), Little Pete (Danny Tamberelli), the show’s angry troublemaker, finds himself confined to the house by his father after destroying the lawn and, faced with the prospect of missing the Fourth of July, decides to tunnel his way out of the house. Like George Washington with regard to his father’s cherry tree, forgiveness will come.
The story of the cherry tree is perhaps the first thing a child learns about this period, and it's no surprise that the Muppets retell it. “Sesame Street.” “What’s that you’re carrying?” roving reporter Kermit the Frog asks George’s father. “That’s your little axe,” the father replies. “How I wish we’d given you that wagon instead… it’s like that all the time: chop, chop, chop, true, true, true, chop, chop, chop, true… I’m getting old before my time, frog.” In another segment, Kermit reports on colonists who have mistaken the Boston Tea Party for a “T Party,” throwing turnips and tamales into the harbor. (“That’s the kind of spirit that’s going to make this country great,” one tells a little girl who has offered her sled. “I guess so,” she replies nonchalantly.)
In 1987, the show offered a “miniseries…telling the story of how America came to be, sort of.” In “Thomas Jefferson Needs a Quill,” “humble colonist” Grover tries to help Jefferson, who has broken his quill, finish the Declaration of Independence, bringing along a drill and a chicken named Phil. He returns in “Crossing the Delaware”; believing Washington’s plan to surprise the British is a surprise party, he’s brought balloons, streamers and noisemakers. And a host of Muppets, including Bert as Jefferson and Ernie as John Adams, gather to elect the national bird, “which will have its image on our new coins and stamps and other cool things like government letters.” The ending is perfect.
Benjamin Franklin's cheerful personality is well suited to light comedy. In 1966 “Haunted” In two parts, “My Friend Ben” and “Samantha for the Defense” (Tubi), Franklin (Fredd Wayne) is accidentally summoned back to the 20th century by his crazy Aunt Clara (Marion Lorne). In addition to crashing a fire truck and trying to pay off an old library fine, Franklin (Fredd Wayne) utters some words to live by (I can’t determine if they’re from Franklin himself or from writer James S. Henerson, but they strike the right tone): “I believe that a man’s wisdom, if he has any, should be left to future generations to measure by their own circumstances; if a man lives beyond his time, and attempts to force his notions upon rising generations, he puts himself in grave danger of forfeiting any claim to wisdom.” As true in 2024 as it was in 1966 and 1776.
A clumsy Franklin appears in the 1953 Disney short film “Ben and I” (not available on Disney+, foolishly, but on YouTube), based on Robert Lawson's children's book about a church mouse responsible for most of Franklin's inventions and successes, with Sterling Holloway as the mouse, Charlie Ruggles as Franklin, and Hans Conried as a panicked Thomas Jefferson. Stan Freberg, the voice of the mouse tour guide who frames the story, played a similarly credit-taking Franklin in “The discovery of electricity” (YouTube), a song not originally included on his 1961 LP “Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America,” in which a neighbor boy (June Foray) conducts the famous experiment. (“Quick, hand me the kite, here comes the press”).
Michael Douglas plays a semi-historical Benjamin Franklin in the new Apple TV+ series.
(Remy Grandroques / Apple)
The semi-historical Ben, in the unlikely form of Michael Douglas, can be found in the recent and melodramatic “Franklin“ from Apple TV+, which will keep you glued to the internet (or books, if you still have them) to sort out truth from far-fetched fiction. A more likely Franklin is played by a subtle Tom Wilkinson in the sly 2008 HBO miniseries. “John Adams,” which earned Emmy Awards for Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti as Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams.
Paul Giamatti, left, played John Adams, and Tom Wilkinson portrayed Benjamin Franklin in the 2008 HBO miniseries “John Adams.”
(Kent Eanes / HBO)
If you prefer your Franklin pure, head straight to Ken Burns' excellent 2022. “Benjamin Franklin” (PBS.com), a four-hour tour of his life from Boston to Philadelphia, London, Boston, Paris and London. Here the question of the slave-owning founders of American liberty is discussed unabashedly, though not without context. The same is true of Burns's 1997 novel. “Thomas Jefferson” (PBS.com), which examines the paradox, as the embodiment of American tragedy, of the man who wrote, “All men are created equal.” [and] endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” and yet they owned a large number of slaves.
James Austin Johnson, left, Kenan Thompson, Nate Bargatze and Mikey Day in the “Washington Dream” sketch on “Saturday Night Live.”
(Will Heath / NBC)
After scholars, comedians are perhaps the most likely to address the issue of slavery among the Founding Fathers. “Saturday Night Live” (Peacock, NBC.com, YouTube) has been there at least a few times. In a 2017 “Weekend Update,” former hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers return as Washington and Jefferson to defend themselves, poorly, against being compared to Robert E. Lee as slaveholders. In the 2023 sketch “Washington's Dream,” in which guest host Nate Bargatze, as Washington, envisions a day when we can “choose our own systems of weights and measures,” Kenan Thompson's black soldier asks, “In this new country, what plans are there for colored men like me?” “Distance will be measured in feet and yards and miles,” Washington replies, ignoring the question. “And the slaves, sir, what about them?” “He asked about the temperature.”
And in the 2002 sketch “Thomas Jefferson Meets Sally Hemings,” guest host Robert De Niro, as Jefferson, approaches Hemings (Maya Rudolph), his newly inherited slave. “If it were up to me, there would be no slavery,” Hemings says. “I mean, I wrote the Declaration of Independence, so that tells you where my head is at… I’d like to take you out for corn cakes sometime,” Jefferson replies. Hemings: “Okay.” Jefferson: “What time do you get off work?” Hemings: “Um, never.”
With its modern, hot, multi-genre soundtrack, Lin-Manuel Miranda “Hamilton” introduced a generation of young Americans to the subtleties of 18th-century fiscal policy. Disney+ offers both the film of the stage show and a sing-along version, which adds subtitles and a bouncing ball (of course, many won’t need the prompt). Miranda can also be found recounting Hamilton’s story in an extra-long Season 4 episode of “Drunk History” (Paramount+, YouTube), with Alia Shawkat as Hamilton and Aubrey Plaza as Aaron Burr, speaking Miranda’s words, just as you always imagined.
In my opinion, no series has served its subject better than “Drunken story” which has the rare virtue of being both terribly funny and accurate to the facts, or at least to one or another accepted version of them. The Comedy Central series, which interprets better and lesser-known past events through a filter of extreme drunkenness, puts an uncensored and unpretentious vernacular spin on history, somehow making it come alive in an especially compelling way; it visited the Revolutionary War several times, including episodes about the crossing of the Delaware River and Benedict Arnold. Some might find the drunken element disturbing, sometimes to the point of sickness, but it's a free country, to paraphrase wise old Franklin, if we can keep it.
